Bright and Hot, Cold and Deep
by Lykegenia
Summary: Zutara Week 2014: Jubilant. One restless night in the Western Air Temple, neither Katara nor Zuko can sleep. The conversation they share sheds light on many things, and makes them contemplate the fact that, maybe, fire and water are not so different. Set between Boiling Rock and Southern Raiders


My entry for Zutara week 2014 day 2, 'Jubilant'. It's set somewhere between Boiling Rock and Southern Raiders, and I don't even know what it is. I own nothing!

* * *

Soft and muted by the acoustics of the canyon, the nightsong of squirrel-frogs and cicadas faded in and out, shifting with the twirls of evening mist that hid the Western Air Temple from the outside world. The shaded edges trapped moisture where moon peaches grew, in blossom at this time of year so that beneath the light of the full moon the lower levels of the great stone columns seemed drifting beneath a summer coating of snow.

Katara was waterbending at the central fountain, immersed in her element, in the rhythms of breath and the night and the smooth coil and loose of her muscles as she moved through her forms. She allowed no rigidity impede her movements, followed no set forms. As any true waterbending master knows, the element that twines the course of rivers and eats away the shoreline defines itself with flow, transition, improvisation; she balanced a fine line between controlling the water between her hands and letting it lead her where it willed.

She smiled as she worked. During the day, while the others practiced their bending, and even when she trained Aang, the restraint of routine gnawed at her, the set patterns of waking and washing and working towards their shared goal of taking down the Fire Lord more than enough to shorten her temper and make her long for the vast silent cold of the tundra. But under the light of the full moon, in the timeless space of midnight when she could just _be_, tension faded from her shoulders, and she became as supple as her element, whether she bent it from the fountain or condensed it from the mist that seemed to dance with her in the plaza. It made her jubilant.

Tonight, driven by nightmares and the knowledge that his sister would soon be after them, Zuko watched her practice a form he had never seen before, one that took hard elements from his firebending and eroded the edges into lines like serpents leave in the sand. He had meant to announce his presence, but felt disconnected from his body, with only the dryness of his eyeballs to inform him that he had been staring for a good minute at least.

This was not the everyday Katara he saw piled under dirty laundry and responsibility. This Katara was the one he had fought with, the one he had strived so long to defeat, the one whose skill he had feared saved the avatar's life and condemned his own. At the North Pole, still raw and relatively untrained, it had taken the rising of the sun for him to beat her; under ancient Ba Sing Se, only the host of Dai Li and the need to get the avatar to safety had held her back; watching her now, toned to fierce precision and bolstered by experience, she could have bested any bender in the world, and yet for this singular moment, her fury was not directed at him.

She was beautiful.

"Zuko."

She had stopped waterbending and was scowling at him, a ribbon of water sparking silver in the moonlight around her shoulders. With a mental shake he stammered for an explanation, but as his hand creeped on the back of his neck and his cheeks blushed hotter and hotter, all he could manage was a rushed, "Can't sleep either, huh?"

"Full moon," she said shortly, and returned to her starting stance.

"Sorry?"

"It's a full moon, I'm a waterbender."

"Oh, right." Like at the North Pole.

He should probably leave, go back to his pallet and try to find a few hours of sleep before the sun rose, but the lure of Katara's grace proved too much. "Do you mind if you watch?" he asked instead.

The question startled her, but true to her element, her reaction was fluid and channelled as she gave a curt nod and watched out of the corner of her eye as he sat down against the temple wall. His gaze never left her, and no matter how she tried to ignore him, a self-consciousness crept into her movements, a forced quality that stemmed from his presence but was directionless because it wasn't directed against him. Chaos thrummed through the reeling water whip, rough where there should be no sharp edges at all.

So she settled, and returned to her foundations, to the push and pull that underlay all life, and redirected the energy of her discomfort. As she did so, her frown faded, her eyes closed, and it seemed as if a thick veil lifted from her eyes.

For weeks she had fought against herself, against the swelling instinct that Zuko really had changed, or rather, had finally realised who he was all along. The betrayal still burned deep, an ember that refused to be put to sleep by the healing coolness of water, but now small enough that it could no longer kindle her hatred. He had helped her brother rescue her father from a Fire Nation prison, had taught Aang firebending when the easiest thing would have been to kidnap him and take him to the Fire Lord instead of the Sun Warrior temple, had submitted to Toph's rough affection with a good humour she would not have thought him capable of. For so long, he had been the enemy, the figurehead of the Fire Nation's arrogance, as well as her own personal villain, and now, her perceptions were taking new directions, turning back on themselves like seaweed swept in by the tide.

"I've been trying to adapt some firebending moves into my waterbending," she offered. "I don't know of you saw that."

"I did," he answered. He stood and stepped towards her. "I could give you a few pointers… if you like."

For a steady moment she regarded him, judging his sincerity, then bent the water back into the fountain and stood, her eyes wide and still very blue in the pale light. Her neutral expression leant him courage and he closed the distance between them, slipping into what Aang called his 'sifu mode' as he worked out how to approach the integration of water and fire.

"What you were doing is pretty close to firebending, but your strikes need to be more dynamic." He faltered as her eyebrows contracted. "Not that, uh, waterbending isn't dynamic, or anything, it's just…" Uncle's words echoed in his mind. "Look, waterbending is about redirecting energy, right? About flowing from attack to defence and back again. Firebending isn't like that; it requires a quicker change of direction. Here." He lowered himself into a guard stand and quickly loosed two bursts of flame that lit the blue night with brilliant orange.

At first, Katara's water whips couldn't stand up to the stress of Zuko's more forceful style of bending, but as they continued, her forms became tighter, more controlled, and even as beads of sweat stood out on her forehead fewer and fewer drops trailed behind the lash points of her element.

"You're really getting the hang of it," Zuko commented as a faint sweep of lilac began to brighten the eastern sky. He breathed heavily; he had tried to fuse his fire with her water just as she tried to match herself to him.

"You're not bad yourself," she replied, with what might have been a smile in proper light. She let the water stream back into the pool. "I have to admit, I half thought you'd turn your nose up at me trying to firebend."

Her candid words quickly overrode the sting to his pride that she would think him so arrogant. "Uncle once said it's wise to draw wisdom from more than one source."

"He sounds like a pretty wise guy," she mused. Distantly, a bird woke to call in the morning, but it seemed a blanket of silence had wrapped itself around where they stood, fire and water, barely three feet apart.

Zuko swallowed and looked away. "He is. If I'd realised that, there are a lot of people I wouldn't have hurt."

She read the subtext for what it was and smiled properly this time, so that small creased formed at the corners of her eyes and made them sparkle.

"What about you? I thought you would've cut off your own foot before learning anything from the Fire Nation," he said, not quite keeping the bitter note from his voice.

It was her turn to look away. As she took a lock of hair and twined it nervously between her fingers, he had to quell the sudden impulse to know what it would feel like between his.

"I guess I just learned to pick stuff up from all over." She shrugged. "There were no waterbenders at home to teach me, so I just made it up along the way. And somehow…" A blush rose in her cheeks. "Seeing you training with Aang, it just made me think that maybe fire and water aren't such different elements. I mean, they're both about controlling the flow of qi, and -"

"But water heals."

"What?"

Zuko sighed and turned away, facing into the dawn. "Since we visited the Sun Warriors, I've understood more that firebending isn't about anger, but fire itself still has the power to destroy. I still have to be careful when I use it not to burn anyone - to hurt anybody. It must be nice to bend an element that doesn't have that." He shook his head. "I'm going to go and see if Aang's up."

He made to walk away but was halted by Katara's words, barely audible.

"You're wrong, Zuko." Her steps fell lightly on the stone as she walked towards him, reached out, placed her cool hand against his shoulder. "In the South Pole, water is the killer. In the spring, if the thaw comes too quickly, the ice can crack and break apart without warning, and in the winter, there are blizzards that last for weeks and are so thick you can get lost three feet from the entrance of your own hut. We respect water because it means life and death for the tribe. But fire is life. It keeps us warm and lets us tell stories. Without it, we'd die." She pressed herself closer to him, for the moment forgetting how much she should hate him, how she should distrust him, and trusted him with something she hadn't even told Sokka. "When I was a little girl, before the Fire Nation raided our village and all I knew about them was from stories, I never believed firebenders were evil. How could they be, when they could create warmth and mesmerising light with just a thought? I couldn't imagine anything better than being able to bend fire."

She yawned and brushed past him, stretching as the shadows of the temple consumed her. "Can you make breakfast? I didn't mean to stay up so late," she called over her shoulder.

It took a moment for him to reply. "Sure."

The sun rose on the back of Zuko's neck, stoking his inner fire even higher than Katara's words. It was early still, and Aang could wait half a candlemark or so. He slipped into a bending stance and ran through some basic exercises, bearing in mind what he had seen of the seamless movements of the master waterbender as he punched, changed direction and shifted his weight. The back of his tunic still seemed to bear the weight of her impression, her words, spoken softly in his ear, a melting of the great rift he had created with his betrayal. He was not fool enough to hope for complete forgiveness yet, because Katara cared too deeply to throw her emotions away in haste, but that hardly mattered. She had been civil to him, had shared a secret that sent heat to the tips of his fingers. It was more than firebending, more than hope that he could find redemption. She thought fire mesmerising.

It was jubilant.


End file.
